Cincinnati's largest cable provider to drop Current TV

Time Warner Cable will not be taking up Al Jazeera’s newly acquired channel. The Associated Press reports Cincinnati’s largest cable provider will no longer carry Current TV after its sale to the Pan-Arab news network.

After the buyout, Al Jazeera announced plans to
gradually transform Current TV into Al Jazeera America by adding five to
10 new U.S. bureaus and hiring more journalists. But immediately following the acquisition by Al Jazeera,
Time Warner released a statement: “Our agreement with Current has been
terminated and we will no longer be carrying the service. We are
removing the service as quickly as possible.”

As AP reports, Al Jazeera has faced an uphill
battle reaching American audiences. In 2010, Tony Burman,
managing director of Al Jazeera’s English branch, blamed hostility from
the Bush administration for reluctance among cable and satellite
companies to carry Al Jazeera.

But at least part of the reluctance is due to the perception from some that the Qatar-based network is anti-American. Dave Marash, a former “Nightline” reporter who worked as
Al Jazeera’s anchor in Washington, D.C., left Al Jazeera in 2008, saying he sensed an anti-American slant.

Despite problems establishing a foothold in the United
States, Al Jazeera has built a substantial following for hard-hitting
news, and it earned multiple U.S. journalism awards in 2012.

Al Gore confirmed the sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera
Wednesday. The former vice president cofounded the left-leaning Current TV
in 2005 to provide what he saw as an alternative perspective in media
through user-generated content. But the network always struggled, making
multiple programming and personnel changes in its quest to become
relevant.

TheBlaze, Glenn Beck's media company, also tried to buy Current TV. But the network declined, reportedly saying, “The legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.”

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

• Tuesday’s Enquirer abandoned its traditional timidity
and published bloody color images of victims of Boston Marathon
bombings. Good. I’m sure also there were images too ghastly for the
breakfast table, but the shift is welcome. The inside image of an
elderly runner knocked down by the blast and framed by Boston cops
running toward the explosion was another good decision. He collapsed as
the blast surge hit him in the midst of other runners. We saw that on
TV/online. It was one of the earliest viral images. NPR said the
78-year-old man stood and walked to the finish line, saying he hadn’t
run 26 miles to quit.

• HuffingtonPost.com quickly repeated this potential calumny: “Investigators
have a suspect — a Saudi Arabian national — in the horrific Boston
Marathon bombings, The (New York) Post has learned. Law enforcement sources said the 20-year-old suspect was under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital.”

About the same time, Massachusetts and Boston officials were telling journalists they had no suspects.

I recall how authorities initially sought someone who
looked like an Arab after the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City
was bombed in 1995. How do I know? It was all over the news media. As
the current FBI website puts it, “Coming on the heels of the (first)
World Trade Center bombing in New York two years earlier, the media and
many Americans immediately assumed that the attack was the handiwork of
Middle Eastern terrorists.”

Two white non-Arab Americans were convicted of the
bombing. The only “Arab” link was murderer Timothy McVeigh’s military
service in the first Iraq invasion, Desert Storm, where he won a Bronze
Star. Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists continued to weave elaborate links
between the Oklahoma City bombers and Arabs.

• Everyone with a microphone seems
to be telling us the investigation of the Boston bombings will be
complex and unhurried. Many recall how long it took to abandon suspicion
of security guard Richard Jewell as the Atlanta Olympics bomber. It
took two years to identify Eric Rudolph as the bomber and another five
to arrest him. False leads will abound and forensic evidence will be
sought, collected and analyzed. Some will be helpful, some will be
misleading. With so many journalists present, initial coverage largely
was self-correcting. The rumor of seven more bombs or a bomb at the JFK
library was quickly spiked. The story that local officials blew up a
third bomb lasted a little longer. That was half-correct: They blew up a
package/backpack but it was not a bomb. There were only two bombs as of
this writing.

Everyone with a microphone seems to be saying the Boston
bombing investigation will be complex and unhurried. Many recall how
long it took to abandon suspicion of security guard Richard Jewell as
the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber. False leads will abound and forensic
evidence will be sought, collected and analyzed. Some will be helpful,
some will be misleading.

• If bombers hoped to create terror, the Boston Marathon
was a smart choice: there would be lots of images from cell phones and
the news media. It fits my theory of 9/11: the initial 2001 attack on
the World Trade Center tower was timed to assure the news media would
get full coverage of the jetliner flying into the second tower.

• Moving on from bloodshed, Rachel Richardson’s Enquirer
story about dogs in the workplace was a smart story, especially part
about socialization being vital to a dog fitting in.

And she pushed my nostalgia button. My first job out of
college was night editing a daily paper in Italy. I bought a Belgian
Shepherd (Groenendael) pup and named him Loki
for the Norse trickster. His mother was a part-wolf/mountain shepherd's
companion and father was an Italian ex-Army K9. With long, silky black
coat, a plume of a tail, alert eyes and ears, Loki was an unbeatable
chick magnet.

His socialization comprised strolling Rome, riding and
waiting in my car, joining me in bars and restaurants, and lying under
my desk at the Rome Daily American at night when I was the only
journalist. I didn't know the breed is famous/infamous for one-person
loyalty and instinct to protect: person, possessions, etc.

Loki didn’t approve of anyone approaching my desk when I
was in the back shop where type was set, pages were composed and the
press run. Anyone else would bring him to his feet, ears back, shoulder
blades up, teeth bared . . . but silent. Even as a pup, he could be
menacing. “Lupo siberiano,” or Siberian wolf, was the Roman nickname for
the breed.

Night messengers who brought engraved zinc plates — photos
for every edition in that ancient era of hot type and flatbed press —
quickly learned to avoid the newsroom and come directly into the back
shop. Loki was a force to be accommodated.

Away from the office, he’d curl up on my Sunbeam Alpine’s
passenger seat and bite anyone who was silly enough to reach into the
car in hopes of a quick theft.

He rarely let go before I returned and that could create
Roman opera buffa. Loki’s victim typically threatened to call police
about my vicious dog and — without telling Loki to let go — I offered to
help by shouting for police. We never did call for police. When
released, the would-be thief unfailingly walked away, cursing me for
enticing him with an open sports car into what he hoped was a crime of
opportunity.

When I worked days, Loki stayed home nearby. His
socialization didn’t accommodate the chaos of a small, crowded newsroom
with strangers coming and going.

Again, thanks for the reminder: fun, smart and god help us, mindful of Enquirer watchdog obligations.

• As anticipated here, the Cleveland Plain Dealer is
following other Newhouse dailies by reducing home deliveries to three
days a week: Sunday and two days to be named later. The PD says it will
print seven days a week for street sales. It also plans to fire about a
third of its newsroom staff. It’s a sad demise of what long was Ohio’s
best daily.

• The Enquirer business section headline was “Survey:
Downtown seen as more positive.” That’s also what the story said, based
on what Downtown Cincinnati Inc. told the paper. The accompanying photo
showed people playing in Washington Park in Over-the-Rhine. People
feeling positive downtown just weren’t photogenic.

• Read Gina Kolata’s April 7 New York Times story on a new
understanding of the role of red meat in heart trouble. It’s among the
best story telling in a long time. It’s a complicated subject but she
draws us in with researchers sitting down to sizzling sirloin breakfast
“for the sake of science.” It gets even better as she explains that the
science involves “a little-studied chemical that is burped out by
bacteria . . . “ Talk about imagery. Send photos.

• NPR is killing its Monday-Thursday afternoon call-in
show, Talk of the Nation, and we’ll all be poorer for it. Talk of the
Nation involves civil, lengthy discussion of timely topics. NPR is
working with Boston’s WBUR to create a program for Talk’s 2-4 p.m. time
slot. NPR says member stations wanted a program more like Morning
Edition and All Things Considered in the afternoon and evening. Too bad.
Expect lots of canned (and cheaply produced) interviews that seem to be
the promise of the new show.

• Journalists should refuse to name sources to whom
they’ve promised confidentiality. The corollary, of course, is to ask
first whether we’re willing to serve time for contempt of court if we
reject a judge's demands that we break our word and name our source(s).
In that sense, we probably don’t think it will happen to us and almost
mindlessly promise confidentiality to encourage sources to talk to us.

So when there is a court confrontation, the refusenik
journalist typically is cast as the hero and the judge as a mindless
apparatchik and/or tool of the prosecutor. That’s too simple. Reporters
are free to ask their sources to release them from their promise of
confidentiality. Judges should compel testimony only when prosecutors
have used every other way to identify reporters’ sources and silence
could pervert justice. Judges are on the hot seat as much as reporters.

The latest unresolved contest involves Jana Winter who
quoted unnamed law enforcement personnel when she reported that Aurora, Colo., gunman James Holmes sent an incriminating notebook to his
psychiatrist before massacring moviegoers. FoxNews.com’s
Winter said the notebook was filled with violent notes and drawings.
Now that the apparently accurate information is out, I don’t see how the
sources’ identities matter to a fair trial if there ever is one.

Rather, I like what Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor
at the University of Maryland, told the New York Times: “If you
required reporters to disclose their sources every time there was a
minor leak in a high profile criminal case, the jails would be filled in
America with journalists.”

• London’s Daily Mail reports the auction of a log book
kept by the RAF navigator whose “bouncing bomb” breached a vital German
dam during World War II. The raid was portrayed in the film, The
Dambusters. The Daily Mail’s story was spoiled only by a photo of the
unique bomb being dropped by a twin-engine plane; Dambusters flew
four-engine Lancaster heavy bombers.

• Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is loathed to degrees that W and Obama cannot imagine. Her
death last week sparked national demonstrations of joy even as the
government and palace hoped that her almost-state funeral in London
could be protected from demonstrators. Haters danced in the street,
daubed “Rust in Hell” about the Iron Lady, and sang “Ding, Dong, the
Witch Is Dead.” That forced BBC to decide whether to play that song from
the
Wizard of Oz movie on BBC radio shows dedicated to hit songs or on news
programs about Thatcher’s life and death. The song reportedly became
No. 1 on iTunes before the funeral and it was headed for the top of the
pop charts, pushed by Thatcher haters. At last report, BBC’s director
general said only a 5-second snippet would be allowed on the main radio
channel. New to his job, he pissed off everyone.

• Patrice Lumumba was the Congo’s first prime minister
after Belgium granted independence to the huge, potentially wealthy and
criminally unprepared colony. He was murdered not long before I began
working on the Congo border in Northern Rhodesia. He already was a
martyr-hero of the Left when I studied African anthropology in London.

Lumumba’s abduction, torture and murder were popularly
assumed to be a CIA operation, working with Belgians, rebels in
copper-rich Katanga province, and others who coveted the Congo’s mineral
wealth and mines.

Now, a curious news story in London’s Telegraph says
Britain’s worldwide Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) engineered
Lumumba’s death. More curious is the weight it gives to a second-hand
source. It quotes Lord Lea of Crondall quoting Baroness
(Daphne) Park of Monmouth, who was the senior MI6 officer in the Congo
then, as saying she "organised it.”

Lord Lea told the Telegraph, "It so
happens that I was having a cup of tea with Daphne Park – we were
colleagues from opposite sides of the Lords – a few months before she
died in March 2010. She had been consul and first secretary in
Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, from 1959 to 1961, which in practice (this
was subsequently acknowledged) meant head of MI6 there. I mentioned the
uproar surrounding Lumumba's abduction and murder, and recalled the
theory that MI6 might have had something to do with it. 'We did,' she
replied, 'I organised it.'"

The Telegraph said Lord Lea claimed
Baroness Park reasonably was concerned that Lumumba might be a communist
siding with Soviet Russia. After all, African and Asian
independence leaders like Lumumba, South Africa’s Mandela and others
often found their most active Cold War support mainly in Moscow and the
wider Communist movement.

Initially blaming the CIA wasn’t irrational. By Lumumba’s
death in 1961, the CIA had engineered the overthrow of elected
governments in Iran and Guatemala and botched the Bay of Pigs invasion
to topple Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

Belgium apologized in 2002 for failing to prevent
Lumumba’s death. In 2006, the Telegraph said, “documents showed the CIA
had plotted to assassinate him but the plot was abandoned.”

Current TV confirmed today that recently axed MSNBC host Keith Olbermann would being joining the network later in 2011. According to a press release, Olbermann will not only be executive producing and hosting a new nightly primetime news and commentary show but that he will also serve as the network's Chief News Officer and that he will have an equity stake in Current Media.

The new year already is looking a lot like the old one for employees at The Enquirer.

Workers at Cincinnati's only remaining daily newspaper got some bad news Wednesday: They can expect to take another five-day furlough during the first quarter of 2011. Robert J. Dickey, who is U.S. newspaper division president at The Gannett Co., The Enquirer's parent firm, announced the latest round of furloughs in a memo sent to workers.

Jim Hopkins' Gannett Blog and some local sources are reporting The Enquirer has laid off between 5 to 7 people this week.

Two of the casualties were the person in charge of the incessantly promotedMoms Like MeWeb site and the assistant managing editor of operations, who performed the administrative functions in the newsroom.

Cincinnati-based Scripps announced in early December that they would be selling or shutting down The Rocky Mountain News in Denver. The deadline for finding a buyer has passed with no word on the fate of the paper.

The Denver Newspaper Agency, which prints the paper, set the deadline of Jan. 16 in response to requests from the unions which represent their workers.

Buchanan says 3CDC is covered fairly, despite her ties

The Enquirer’s top boss has
told CityBeat that her connection to a major real estate development group was “overlooked”
in a lengthy, front-page article about the organization that was published
April 15.

Publisher Margaret Buchanan wrote
in response to an email that she didn’t influence the preparation, editing or
placement of an article about the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. (3CDC).
Buchanan sits on 3CDC’s executive committee, and is in charge of overseeing
publicity and marketing efforts for the organization.

The Enquirer published a 1,900
word-plus article about 3CDC, lauding the group for its efforts to redevelop
Over-the-Rhine despite the economic downturn. Buchanan’s role with 3CDC wasn’t
mentioned, but she told CityBeat it has been disclosed in past articles and
will be done again in the future.

Over several years, The
Cincinnati Enquirer has fully covered the pro's and con's (sic) of 3CDC's development
efforts in Over-the-Rhine for our readers and we are very proud of that
coverage.

As publisher, I sit on 3CDC's
executive committee — and did not influence any of the reporting on this issue.
Our editor is completely responsible for all editorial decisions. Typically my
participation on this committee is disclosed, although it was overlooked for
the article that ran on Sunday, April 15. It will continue to be disclosed in
the future.

Margaret Buchanan

A search using the ProQuest
database of The Enquirer’s archives found that the newspaper has published 481
articles and news briefs mentioning 3CDC since the group began its efforts in 2004.
(Given how the database is organized, however, it’s likely that some of the
entries might be duplicative.)

Of the 481 entries, Buchanan
was mentioned in 15 articles. That equates to about 1/32nd of the
articles.

Most of the published
mentions about Buchanan’s ties to 3CDC weren’t in articles about the group’s retail
and residential development projects. Rather, they mostly occurred in articles
about 3CDC’s efforts to move a homeless shelter away from Over-the-Rhine.

Also, one mention was in an
article about the new School for Creative and Performing Arts, while another
occurred in a piece marking the 10th anniversary of the police
shooting death of Timothy Thomas.

This week’s Porkopolis column
mentioned Gannett’s ethics code, which includes such admonishments as “We will
remain free of outside interests, investments or business relationships that
may compromise the credibility of our news report,” and “We will avoid
potential conflicts of interest and eliminate inappropriate influence on
content.”

The code also states “When
unavoidable personal or business interests could compromise the newspaper’s
credibility, such potential conflicts must be disclosed to one’s superior and,
if relevant, to readers.”

In her email, Buchanan didn’t
address why these rules don’t apply to her connection to 3CDC.

Flub at Louisville design hub caused thousands of papers to be trashed

Confirming rumors that swirled for two days through media circles, The Enquirer’s top editor has written a memo outlining how some editions of Sunday’s newspaper included a photograph with the word “fuck” in it.

Once editors learned about the photo, several thousand copies of the newspaper that hadn’t yet been distributed were trashed. The edition was reprinted without the offending photo.

Enquirer Editor Carolyn Washburn confirmed the gaffe in an email to staffers sent at 4:10 p.m Monday, which CityBeat received today.

“I learned about this after midnight Saturday when someone in our operation saw this photo and alerted us,” Washburn wrote. “We stopped the presses to change the photo and threw out thousands of papers still sitting at our dock.”

Reportedly, Washburn has been fielding complaints from readers who received the paper for the past two days.

The page in question was laid out by a “design hub” in Louisville, which is part of a push by The Gannett Co., The Enquirer’s owner, to centralize some functions like many copy-editing duties into regional locations.

The same design hub was responsible for a similar incident in December when a Gannett paper in South Carolina, The Greenville News, published an article with the word “fuck” randomly inserted into it. The gaffe caught the attention of several websites including The Huffington Post and Romenesko.com.

Sunday’s incident occurred just two days after four veteran copy editors at The Enquirer left after taking an “early retirement” severance deal to reduce the newspaper’s expenses.

Here is the full text of Washburn’s email:

Sent: Mon 4/16/2012 4:10 PM

From: Carolyn Washburn

To: Cin-News Users

Cc:

Subject: in case you are getting calls about a photo in Sunday's paper

A photo ran on the state government page of a protestor holding up a sign that used the word f#*&. It was caught on the press and replated but it still went out to several thousand homes.

Here is how I am responding.

Yes, the photo was completely inappropriate, on many levels.

I learned about this after midnight Saturday when someone in our operation saw this photo and alerted us. We stopped the presses to change the photo and threw out thousands of papers still sitting at our dock. Unfortunately a few thousand papers had already gone out to carriers.

I deeply apologize and am working this morning to understand why this photo was chosen in the first place and why it was not caught sooner. I take this very seriously.